The game that was: Colorado 71, WSU 60
COUGARS
FROM BOULDER, Colo. -- We've filed our game story and will link that when it's available. For now, a quick look at Colorado's 71-60 win here at the Coors Event Center.
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PLAYER OF THE GAME -- Easy call here. Carlon Brown torched the Cougars in the second half, scoring 18 of his game-high 28 points while making all four of his 3-point attempts. Brown was open quite a bit in the first half, too, though he missed six of eight shots from outside. It was more of the same after halftime, except he made them all instead of missing. Brown really exploited WSU's zone defense, and his teammates did a good job of getting him the ball for open looks. He finished 9-16 from the field.
PLAY OF THE GAME -- There was no obvious turning point tonight, as Colorado came out so hot in the second half that the game was never really in question. Although, Faisal Aden and Reggie Moore each had opportunities to at least make things a little more interesting late, when each missed tough layups that would have cut Colorado's lead to six points. So for the play of the game, we'll go with Brown's first 3-pointer of the second half. It came after an offensive foul on Charlie Enquist, and set an immediate tone that Colorado followed the rest of the game.
KEY STAT -- Colorado made six of its eight 3-point attempts in the second half after missing 12 of 15 before halftime. That really did the Cougars in, and eventually took them out of their 2-3 matchup zone defense.
QUOTABLE -- "We were hoping that our guards and men at the bottom could get at the shooters, but they just moved the ball really well and quick, and we weren’t able to get as quick as we wanted out to the shooters." -- WSU guard Dexter Kernich-Drew, who made his first career start.
NEXT UP -- Sunday at Washington (4 p.m., FSN). The Huskies escaped Utah with a 57-53 win on Saturday, and are 3-1 in conference play. WSU took two of three from UW last season.
We'll be back later with some more quotes and thoughts.
Christian Caple can be reached at christianc@spokesman.com. Twitter: @ChristianCaple